This is What a Feminist Army Looks Like
July 23, 2009
Perhaps you’re sick of the story, but I never fail to be shocked and disgusted anew at watching so-called feminists cozy up to the war machine (like it’s a new vibrator! Couldn’t resist.) From Tom Hayden at the HuffPo:
Pentagon Enlists Feminists for War Aims
Over a decade ago a young woman approached me on the California Senate floor with a petition against the Taliban. Women are being repressed, tortured and killed by religious fundamentalists, she said. I signed on. The Taliban seemed like a Ku Klux Klan aimed at women. I was disgusted that the State Department and oil companies would negotiate with them over pipelines, with cursory regard for women’s rights. I still feel that way.
But I had no idea then that I was joining The Feminist Majority in a coalition with the Pentagon to invade and occupy Afghanistan. Given the respect I have for Ellie Smeal and Kathy Spillar, among others, it’s still hard to believe that they think Afghan women can be liberated by an invading, bombing, imprisoning American army. It’s hard to believe that Predators, drones, Special Forces, detention camps and foreign occupiers are solutions to Taliban fundamentalism.
It was so easy to see through Bush’s claims that the war in Iraq had anything to do with advancing women’s rights there. But Obama’s war in Afghanistan is somehow a different story. I’d say that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is supposedly indicative of psychosis, but what do I know? Psychiatry, as we know, is sexist. War, on the other hand, has always been an indispensable tool in advancing feminist agendas. Right?
Unfortunately, we are dealing with statist-minded feminists who think that because increased government intervention has not yet solved the problem, the only solution is to escalate the intervention. Let’s look at how much Western occupation has already accomplished:
Even the US-supported Kabul government showed its real character this year by passing a law requiring women to obey their husbands in sexual matters, in violation of the country’s own constitution and international norms.
A top United Nations official this month told a Kabul audience “that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned.” This was eight years following the Bonn Agreement which included human rights at its core. In northern areas under Western occupation, the UN report found that in 39 percent of rapes “that perpetrators were directly linked to power brokers who are, effectively, above the law and enjoy immunity from arrest as well as immunity from social condemnation.”
It’s safe to say the Kabul government will not be recognizing any NOW chapters among its local non-governmental organizations in the foreseeable future.
That is probably for the best. If the feminists think bombs are the answer, who needs enemies?
The FMF is not only wrong, but also evasive:
The Feminist Majority chooses to be uncharacteristically obscure in advocating more American troops as the solution. Its website speaks of more “peacekeeping forces” rather than an escalation of the occupation. They write that “virtually everyone knows that a military solution alone won’t work. Yet, we cannot ignore that security and the Taliban are among Afghans’ top concerns”, whatever that means. They quote an Afghan human rights activist, Sima Simar, who obliquely says “security must be re-established until the Afghan army and police can take over.” But they fail to note that the current Pentagon plan for establishing an Afghan security force will take at least ten more years.
Within some feminist circles it is practically a truism that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” yet the FMF seems all too eager to get their hands on the Pentagon’s tools:
The Feminist Majority is being used by the Pentagon to advance its war aims. Perhaps they believe they are using the Pentagon, though they don’t say it. One result is division and confusion within the peace movement. In soliciting support from genuine peace groups for Afghanistan, for example, The Feminist Majority is less than candid that the funds are linked to the escalation of the war.
My headline promised to show you what a feminist army looks like. Unfortunately, it looks an awful lot like this:
Steven Green
US ex-soldier guilty of Iraq rape
Chris Hedges, in his book “What Every Person Should Know About War,” reports that “in peacetime, male U.S. military personnel are less likely to commit rape than are male civilians of the same age. In the heightened aggression of combat, all violent acts are more common, including rape.” This means rape of the civilian population as well as their fellow soldiers: according to the LA Times article “Rapists in the Ranks,” women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.
I doubt that American feminists would want an army of men with guns to set them free from perceived abuses, yet they are all too willing to ship them overseas, where the men are known to become more violent. Many of these feminists are probably slightly put off by guns, men with guns, and especially groups of men with guns, but this distaste seems to evaporate as soon as it comes to forcing feminist agendas in remote lands. Your average feminist, particularly a lefty one, is probably disgusted by the attendees at a NASCAR race, for heaven’s sake; but replace their beers with AK-47s and put them in service of supposedly women-friendly goals, and everything’s suddenly fine?
If these feminists are at all honest, and not simply in love with power for power’s sake, then they are inadvertently making the same mistake that conservatives are often guilty of: assuming that a government which bumbles at home is going to suddenly accomplish its stated goals, efficiently and compassionately, as soon as you give it guns, planes and money. But, as painful as it is to say here, it is increasingly difficult for me to believe that mainstream feminists have women’s best interests at heart. The pursuit of power seems to have superseded the desire for equality.
Incidentally, from the statement Steven Green read at his conviction, it seems that he learned the hard and horrible way that war tends to bring out the worst in a soldier. What does it mean when a convicted rapist and former soldier can see that war is wrong and repent his involvement in it, but comfortable stateside feminists cannot?
Before I was in the Army, I never thought I would kill anyone, and even after I was in the Army, but before I went to Iraq, I never thought I would intentionally kill a civilian. When I was in Iraq, something happened to me that I can only explain by saying that I lost my mind. At some point while I was in Iraq, I stopped seeing Iraqi’s as good and bad, as men, women, and children. I started seeing them all as one, and evil, and less than human. When that happened, any natural, learned, or religious morality, that normally would have stopped this, was gone.
…I know that I have done evil, and I fear that the wrath of the Lord will come upon me on that day. But, I hope that you and your family at least can find some comfort in God’s justice.
I see now that war is intrinsically evil, because killing is intrinsically evil. And, I am sorry I ever had anything to do with either.
